So what is a Dynamic Fastener, and why is it suddenly all over UFC broadcasts?

If you feel like you’ve been seeing the words “Dynamic Fastener” an awful lot during recent UFC broadcasts, it’s not just your imagination.

At Wednesday night’s UFC Fight Night 35 event, for example, nearly half of the fighters who stepped in the cage did so with the Dynamic Fastener logo on their shorts. Sometimes, as was the case with the co-main-event bout between Brad Tavares and Lorenz Larkin, both fighters sported the same Dynamic Fastener patch. So did prelim fighters like Louis Smolka, Isaac Vallie-Flagg, Ramsey Nijem and John Moraga.

And that’s just one night.

Truth is, you might be hard-pressed to find a UFC event from the past few months where Dynamic Fastener wasn’t present on some fighter’s shorts. So what gives? Why is a company that most fight fans have probably never heard of, and which sells a product that most fight fans probably couldn’t even describe, suddenly so interested in sponsoring UFC fighters? And just what exactly is a dynamic fastener, anyway?

I called up Kevin Perz, the president and owner of the little company from Raytown, Mo., in order to find out. What I got was not only a quick education in fasteners, but also a glimpse of the current sponsorship landscape for UFC fighters, along with some ideas on what could be done about it.

“We sell tools and fasteners to commercial construction, with an emphasis on people who work with sheet metal,” Perz told MMAjunkie.

In other words, screws and pins and clamps and stuff, but also other tools that you might need if you’re in the type of business that requires bulk purchases of screws and pins and clamps and stuff. The company has about 100 employees, according to Perz, warehouses in six states, and sponsorship deals with more UFC fighters than Perz can realistically keep track of, with more coming in all the time.

“Every time we put our name on TV, the next day at work I get a bunch of emails,” Perz said. “After [UFC 168], I got four emails all from new (fighters’) managers, and I said yes to all four. [Thursday] I got two, and I said yes to one, but the other never got back to me with prices. … These managers, they’re all calling me. And I just keep saying yes.”

Why he keeps saying yes is a trickier question.

For starters, Perz is a big MMA fan. You can tell that much just from talking to him about it for five minutes. His son wrestles at Benedictine College in nearby Atchison, Kan., and Perz, a longtime boxing enthusiast, says he got hooked on the sport in recent years.

“I never watch boxing anymore now that I’ve seen MMA.” he said.

So that’s part of it. He likes the sport, likes seeing his company’s name on TV, and he also likes supporting fighters, especially local favorites like Bobby Voelker. He got involved with the local Shark Fights promotion, where for a fee he could get his logo on the canvas and six cageside seats, which he insists is the absolute best place to watch an MMA fight.

“I don’t really care about the canvas; I just want the six tickets right there on the fence,” Perz said. “I’d rather watch amateurs from the fence than Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos from a few rows back.”

There’s also the fact that, per fighter, these sponsorships don’t cost him that much. For an average of about $1,500 each, Perz said, he can get his logo on several fighters at each event. Occasionally he spends more, as with his favorite fighter, Miesha Tate (in order, Perz’s top three favorite fighters are Tate, Jon Jones and “whoever’s fighting Ronda Rousey”). He paid Tate $6,500 for her fight with Rousey, he said, and also offered her a $10,000 bonus if she won –that’s how much he wants to see Rousey get beat.

Usually, however, Perz doesn’t go after specific fighters he wants to sponsor, in part because his budget doesn’t often allow him to nab headliners. Usually what happens is managers see his logo all over the shorts of other fighters, then call or email him out of the blue to ask if he’d be interested in sponsoring one of their guys at an upcoming event. And Perz, because he can’t quite help himself, just keeps saying yes.

It also helps that the UFC doesn’t apply it’s so-called “sponsor tax” to Dynamic Fastener. While clothing apparel companies might have to shell out big money just for the opportunity to sponsor a UFC fighter, Perz doesn’t, which is ultimately a good thing for fighters.

“We’re a small company,” Perz said. “If they employed that tax on us, and I hear it’s a minimum of $50,000, we wouldn’t sponsor anyone. This isn’t anything – you know, it’s just kind of fun. It’s fun seeing our name on TV with the coolest sport on Earth, and hopefully enough of our customers see it that it pays for itself or comes close.”

There’s also the fact that, because the sponsorship market in the UFC is so lean – and because his penchant for sponsoring multiple fighters in all positions on a fight card is so well known – Perz has a lot of different managers competing for his sponsorship dollar. He sometimes strikes better deals by sponsoring multiple fighters under a single management company via a “bundle price,” he said, and he’s pleased enough with the results that he’ll probably just keep doing it indefinitely.

“I ask myself that question a lot,” Perz said. “I’m an engineer, and I tend to overanalyze things sometimes. Sometimes I think, what is my problem? Am I ever going to say no? But I could see doing this for years if it stayed at the pricing levels I’m comfortable with. I could just keep doing it.”

In fact, if there’s anything that really seems to surprise Perz about his experience as a UFC sponsor, it’s that there aren’t more companies like his in the mix. Maybe it’s the sponsor tax that some are asked to pay and others aren’t. Maybe it’s just a concern that there’s not enough return on investment involved in the business of putting a company logo on some guy’s sweaty, blood-stained shorts.

Whatever it is, Perz said, he’s surprised the UFC itself isn’t more interested in asking these questions, finding out what gets smaller companies like Dynamic Fastener to kick down some dough for hard-working fighters.

“If I were [the UFC], I’d ask, ‘Why do you guys do this?’” Perz said. “See if you can get other little companies like Dynamic Fastener involved in this, and in that way make the fighters more money. It’d be bad for us because then we’d be priced out in no time. But it would be good for the sport.”

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